SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, July 21, 2004

OLNEY SPRINGS, Colo. -- Several hundred inmates set fires and attacked their cellmates at a privately run prison in southern Colorado early Wednesday, leaving more than a dozen people injured, authorities said.

Five of the 13 injured inmates were from Washington state, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections. The five were treated at local hospitals and returned to the prison, spokeswoman Alison Morgan said.

Colorado State Patrol officials told the Denver Post that the arrival this month of 198 Washington prisoners might have fueled the riot. Washington is housing inmates there -- and another 240 in Nevada -- because of overcrowding in the state's prisons.

Angela Harris of Renton said her brother, Walter -- who is serving nearly 19 years for an assault conviction that he's appealing -- called from the Colorado prison Tuesday night and told her some inmates were rioting. She could hear noise in the background.

"You probably won't hear from me for a while," she said he told her.

Harris said she and her family had tried to keep the state from transferring her brother so far away and were devastated when he was. She said if he were still behind bars in Monroe, they could visit and make sure he's OK.

"Of course I'm worried about him," she said. "There's nothing we can do."